Tuesday, March 13, 2007

A Kick in the Pants From Carleton

So I've been accepted for my "back up" grad school plans: an MA in Sociology.

I was accepted to Western within two weeks of my application being submitted and was offered $16,500

Today I was accepted to Carleton (Sociology, not Public Administration)...with a funding offer of.....*drum roll* $2000....nope not missing a zero....I was offered more for my undergraduate!

What a kick in the pants....

See, I'm from London, so I could live at home and save a lot of this, while Ottawa is pretty expensive to live (compared to me living in Peterborough the past four years).

Either way, this is my 'back up' plans. I'm really hoping to do a Master's degree in public policy/public administration at Carleton or Queen's. Just waiting for these offers to (hopefully) come in (with funding too). *fingers crossed*

In other news, my summer job hunt isn't going as well as I had hoped. I had applied to be an intern for the Fraser Institute in education policy. Even though I have a few years of experience with surveys and interviews, and after taking a Sociology of Education course that examined theory, (understanding why certain members of society don't go on to post-secondary for example) I still wasn't considered for an interview. I'm disappointed, but I have another job lined up.

I applied for the Ontario-Quebec student exchange and had my language assessment last week. This would be an excellent experience and I am looking forward to using my French, I keep feeling like I'm losing it because I don't get a chance to use it in Peterborough or London.

The suspense is killing me, but luckily I'm drowning in other school work to fret (too long) about it.

4 Comments:

Blogger Road Hammer said...

Blessing in disguise. As an alumni of the place, I can tell you any social science faculty at Carleton, especially at the graduate level, is is no place for a conservative. However, the MPA is a ticket right in to the civil service.

Tue Mar 13, 09:06:00 PM EDT  
Blogger Spitfire said...

Good to know. Thanks :-D

I'm trying to get out of Sociology (even though I like the discipline) as departments often have only one way to seeing how things ought to be. When I brought up in a seminar last week that perhaps there is nothing wrong with inequality, people's mouths dropped....*sigh* I'm surprised I lasted four years ;)

Tue Mar 13, 10:49:00 PM EDT  
Blogger Cam said...

16,500 that's not half bad! I haven't checked out graduate schools too much yet... I've got one more year left. Do you mind telling me what your gpa was? I'm concerned about the price of a MA, but hearing about your offer cheers me up.

I can fully relate to your disillusionment with sociology. Great discipline, great theory, but talk about ideolgical biases! I was going to pursue a major, but opted for the minor lest the constant emphasis on equality brainwashes me into a communist. It took me till second year to start questioning some of the philosophical premises that a lot of these theories rest on (ie, that collectivism by definition is good, that the government should tailor society accordingly, that relative poverty is as bad as absolute poverty, etc., etc.).

Good luck on the rest of your applications, I'm thinking about going into public policy/diplomacy too so its nice to hear from others who are going the same route.

Wed Mar 14, 10:49:00 AM EDT  
Blogger Spitfire said...

I had >80% average throughout all four years.

Wed Mar 14, 10:51:00 AM EDT  

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